*** June 2022 ACCA APM exam – Instant Poll and comments ***

Thé exam was really spécial. It felt easy but it was actuelly hard.
I got the same questions as mentionned before.
Time pressure is really a challenge honnestly!!!

Q1)
– Complete the financial statements i.e. DPS, current ratio, ROCE, RI (left empty)
– Evaluation inventory management system and performance reporting system
– Balance scorecard appraisal
– Behaviour impact BSC has on staff

That was really hard in terms of Time and took me almost half of thé exam Time So it is Not easy to do well for the other questions.
There was a lot to say regarding thé current performance management system.
Béhavior impact of bsc on staff was ok as it was about explain une What gets measured gets done.
Thé bsc appraisal was hard for me especially as there was a lot of marks there.

Q2)
– Apportionment of overhead of sales staff. Calculate and comment on impact
– Evaluate ABM and whether it should be implemented

Thats was weird as thé company didnt have money to Invest in a new IT system. I said it was good for them to implément it because it will help in pricing décision ( lot of compétition in thé industry So they need to remain compétitive), also will help with quality management So i made a link with TQM and thé quality issue they recently had with their shoes ; finally i made a link with kaizen as they can reduce costs gradually by for eg starting with rfid tags and then improve thé following Year. They had big issues within the warehouse So rfid could help.
I hope it is what they wanted. I tried to make a link with thé information.

Q3)
– Risk attitude and challenges to changes in engineers’ compensation packages (Basic pay being reduced, fixed pay per visit and commission
– Director shares and general reward scheme linking to SH wealth

Here for engineers i talked about demotivation, résignation, quantity over quality.
For directors i Said it was good to align but as it was Not an obligation then again it could be ignored.

I am just waiting for the results as îll get them on vomi days haha

Yeh BSC through me off what I did was
1.write general info about bsc and how it was so much better than the current PMR in reaching goals

2.how each of the 2 CSF/measure heading, now supported business goals and example KPI’s for each.
(One was customer satisfaction &the other learning and innovation or something like that.)

3.The 2 CSF\ measure headings had 3 metrics each under them essentially they weren’t detailed enough to be KPI’s. Like one just said customer surveys, so for each one basically added KPI, and said how it supports the business objectives

4 I read the question as you can add only 2 additional measure headings/CSF and then KPi these. I think the bar in new suggestions was mentioned , so you couldn’t rattleUp marks just suggesting new measures/CSF/kpis and had to critique the existing CSF/measure headings and come up with KPI to help align with business goals

Could be totally off but as was so many marks was the only logical way I could think to get that much marks

I think I scored zero marks for Q2 on ABM. 🙁 Completely caught me off guard. And the excel in the exam was so poor. The spreadsheet kept giving formular errors and was so difficult to link cells. And it was very slow too

I honestly had the worst exam experience after sitting remote from home and being ignored by Invigilators for almost an hour to use my toilet break, totally knocked my flow towards the end of my paper.

Same questions above, genuinely have no idea at this stage how I have done, but interested to know if anyone was on a similar tangent?

Q1)
i) Complete financial ratios and comment on inventory system
ii) Evaluate current performance report
iii) Balanced scorecard
iv) BSC impact on employee behaviour

i) Unsure if i covered this properly, ratios seemed okay, although felt slightly confused by allocation of marks. In regards to inventory management system, discussion was mainly around increase of held inventory and decreasing current ratio despite lower sales etc. Also touched on note regarding inventory being held containing a mix of Raw / WIP and Finished Goods but this question was a little weird for me.

ii) Seemed okay in this question, various pro’s and cons but linked to embedded requirement as to whether it fully satisfied the needs of the board – related to non-financial elements of the mission statement which from memory was customer satisfaction, innovation and quality products. Also discussed purely internal focused report, which would not help directors (users) to respond to emerging threats in the business environment / requirement for external information too. Used Purpose, Audience, Layout and Information to evaluate pros/cons and structure my answer. Hoping this was a bit better executed than i!

iii) Struggled with this one although tried to break down by discussing what the balance scorecard is /how it works, and how it could be used to improve performance measurement of the non-financial elements which the current report was lacking as was purely financial (linking to mission / breaking down into CSF). I tried to link as best as I could to the scenario for measures related to Innovation and Learning and Customers perspective of BSC. In relation to CFO comments, I suggested two other PM for each which I can’t remember exactly although know one was ‘repeat purchases for customers’ and another was regarding ‘cross training of factory staff’ – that from the scenario worked on 1 element of the 5 stage paint production process and factory staff. I then discussed the pro’s and con’s of the model – criticising the CFO expectation of immediate roll out as steps involved for implementing BSC.
On reflection, i think for the measure section, i missed the criticism element which even though I can’t fully remember,unsure whether the measures suggested were broad targets and specific KPI were required etc – at this point unsure but hope I picked up a few marks where I could!

iv) Unsure again on this one, when I finished, I knew i should have linked it directly to the ‘deal with people’ element of implementing BSC but we live and learn! I think my answer here was fairly general.

Q2)
i) Engineers’ compensation packages – discuss adverse impact (Basic pay being reduced, fixed pay per visit and commission selling products / warranties)
ii)DSOS

i) Felt like this went okay, was generally application based and took a ‘common sense’ approach to be honest! Helped that my partner is an engineer himself, so praying I picked up some marks here!

ii) From my memory I thought the commentary said that the directors did not want to take risks, although above I read a comment that they were too risky! I possibly misread here which would be super annoying but, my answer was generally discussing the requirement of alignment of the interests of the shareholders and the directors etc. Touched on the ‘agency theory’.

** this is now when I had been waiting to use the loo for over an hour and was slowly loosing ability to concentrate**

Q3)
i) Calculation (Activity based costing related)
ii) Discussion of ABM and whether it should be implemented

i) Did not even attempt – 9 marks, so annoyed but opened the spreadsheet and really struggled understanding the question and data – possibly down to my circumstance as usually pretty strong with costing but let myself down here!

ii) Again, this was a useless question for me. Managed to get some detail down as to what ABM is / strategic / operational then had some brief comments about benefits etc, helping chose products / customers / identify activities that dont add value… had like 10mins on the clock at this point and saw the comment re. no funds to invest in systems… instantly concluded that wouldn’t be appropriate to implement unless they had detailed systems to obtain accurate data to link to activities – shot in the dark but possibly picked up 1 or 2 marks (I hope).

Praying I have got through this one, interested to hear if my answered aligned at all to anyone! Good luck all and hope you’ve got the results you wanted 🙂

ale.crr wrote:I am reading relatively few comments about ROI/RI BCG and pyramid.
What did you write on BCG? There were 18 marks but so little in the evidence!

I think BCG involved suggestion of performance metric and their interpretation with ofcourse link to the scenario. There were three divisions. The upper row of BCG matrix calls for profit growth related measures while lower half focuses on cash generation. Plus you’d have liked to include how this mapping helps the company like cash generated from cash cow helps to invest in the stars.
ROI and RI had three different ways which included marketing, R&D and head office costs. Not sure how we should had calculated this but someone has said it takes into account traceable and controllable profit.
Performance Pyramid had a wheel type measures. We just had to link each measure to the headings inside the pyramids and say how it effects external effectiveness or internal efficiency.

Question 1- BCG matrik, i dont know how to related to the cases since the marks 16-18 marks if i not mistake.

From my memory was from Customer and Learning only!